Background of illegal File sharing

As per the Digital Economy Act 2010, a range of duties have been assigned to Ofcom. Online copyright infringement also comes under the purview of Ofcom. It has become the duty of Ofcom to monitor the level of use of the internet for infringement of copyright. To monitor the level of infringement, Ofcom has to develop a reliable and representative measuring system.

This system should be able to weigh the attitude of the people in the UK towards ill-legal file sharing and also the extent of ill-legal file sharing is taking place in the country. A pilot survey on estimating the level of ill-legal file sharing and downloading was conducted by Kantar Media, in the year 2010. The survey used face to face, online and telephone methodologies to interview adults and children aged 12 – 15.

The pilot research aimed to compare quantitative data derived from equal amount of face to face, online and telephone surveys and to find whether there are any glaring differences. The research distributed questionnaire as the survey wanted to investigate consumer understanding and interpretation. The pilot project also wanted to know which methodology gets the most accurate data as it is difficult to get honest response where ill-legality is involved.

The survey wanted to get information as to whether there is any likelihood of the file-sharers showing interest in participating in a particular survey methodology and whether any difference could be found in their responses. The findings of the research as well as its recommendations as to how the file-sharing could be monitored in future etc were given in a report.

Peer review on ill-legal file-sharing pilot – prepared by Continental Research

The main purpose of the Peer Review was to find out whether there is any loop-holes in the proposed measurement methodology and what is the impact of these weaknesses on the findings of the survey and it was also the objective of the review to suggest amendment to the methodology if found necessary. The intention of the review was to make the approach as healthy as possible, so all the chosen methodology was completely evaluated. This made Ofcom fully prepared to face any challenge with regard to its approach.

The Peer Review was granted access to the questionnaire used by the pilot survey, the report of Kantar research, the data collected from respondents by the pilot survey and the like. Peer review had experience in undertaking research so as to make an evaluation of the recommendations made. For making this evaluation the review had made further analysis of the respondent data. The summary of recommendations and the analysis that support these recommendations are stated below. The Kantar report on the pilot gave important considerations to representativeness and honesty. The former denotes the proper coverage of the target market by sample design and data collection methodology and the latter denotes the delivery of direct questions so that the respondents need not amend their responses lest admitting indulgence in illegal activities.